


fae's favour

by TheQueenInTheNorth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Mythology, F/M, Human!Sinara, fae!kasius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 15:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21083741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/pseuds/TheQueenInTheNorth
Summary: Sinara is the village's outcast already so she doesn't see why she shouldn't go see the fairy rings.





	fae's favour

Sinara was well aware of the whispers behind her back, of being called bad luck.

When the spring sickness took her younger siblings, she’d been called lucky, her survival a blessing.

But then her father’s ship had wrecked, her mother had had a nasty fall, and the uncle who’d taken her in had his skull caved in by a spooked horse kicking out as he’d chased off the wolves that had grown bold over a harsh winter.

Now she was a jinx, a dark omen, and her widowed aunt only put up with her because the priest praised her as a godly woman for doing it.

Sinara knew she didn’t like her, not to even mention loving her, and she swallowed down the hurt of that and turned it into anger. If she was cursed, she thought, people really ought to pity her for it, and not the woman who fed her scraps and send her on all her errands.

The villagers did not see her as one of their own.

The other children were wary. The other children were warned away from playing with her in much the same way they were warned not to stray near the fairy rings deep in the woods.

Sinara got that warning, too, but her aunt said it in that way she said all the things Sinara was forbidden, all the things she did anyway.

It felt more like being sent there. She was stubborn enough to go.

It was disappointingly boring, her palms sweaty and her heart racing for nothing at all.

She settled against a nearby tree and waited. Perhaps something worthwhile would still happen. She chucked a stone into the circle and it just lay there.

She watched it, half expecting the ground to open to swallow it.

She chucked another, and a third.

They stayed there. The ground didn’t open. The boy just appeared.

His clothes were spotless, his head cocked to the side curiously, his skin so pale it had an almost bluish tint to it.

She gaped and slowly got to her feet. There was a stone still in her hand. She should’ve run. She wanted to run. But the boy was not advancing, her feet were not working, and there was a stone in her hand, and then it wasn’t in her hand anymore.

She lowered her hand slowly. He hadn’t moved, except he must have because the stone hadn’t hit him and Sinara prided herself on her aim.

“That was quite rude,”the boy said. It was strangely melodious for four simple words, like the world’s shortest song.

Sinara hunched her shoulders and glared. He looked like any other boy, just cleaner and prettier. She knew he wasn’t a boy at all.

“So is not responding,”he chided.

Her glare deepened.“So’s popping up like that, out of nowhere.”

“Well, you were throwing stones.” He shrugged. She saw no bells but she heard some jingle as he stepped closer.“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I’m not frightened,”she lied, jutting out her chin.

He stayed inside the circle.

He reached out a hand.“May I have your name?”

Sinara worried her lip between her teeth. Never give a fae anything, she’d been told. Somehow, she was not inclined to do so anyway just to spite her aunt.“Depends. What do you intend to do with it?”

He smiled at that, broad and bright and with teeth just a little too sharp.“Good answer.”

Her feet stopped being frozen to the ground. She ran all the way back to the village and if her aunt was disappointed that she’d returned, she did not say.

* * *

She never told anyone that there really was something living in the woods. The fae showing himself to her would be twisted into her fault, surely, just further proof that she was a burden on those godly folks.

She pushed the memory aside, pushed it down until she was half convinced she’d made it up.

She did not venture to the fairy rings again.

Not until her cousin brought home his first child to meet the family and her aunt crooked three fingers above the babe to ward off spirits, and then, almost absently, repeated the sign towards Sinara.

It meant to drive out evil and unwanted things.

She wasn’t sure it did anything for evil things, but it at least drove one unwanted thing into the woods.

She sat by the same tree and tried not to pay any attention to the stinging at the corners of her eyes, taking small, listless bites of her sandwich.

The soft jingling of bells was all the warning she got before he appeared again.

“No stones this time?”he asked, as if months hadn’t passed since she’d last been here.

Perhaps time moved different for his kind, although he still looked to be her age.

Sinara shook her head and took another bite of bread.

He smiled, staring at her with eyes that seemed to see far more than they should. There was a glint in them that was decidedly not human.

He held out his hand, offering a perfect bunch of grapes.“Here, have some.”

She shook her head again and his smile faltered.

Offending him was a bad idea. Eating fae food was at least as bad, maybe worse.

“You can have some of mine,”she said, breaking her sandwich in half and inching towards the circle. He was right at the edge. He did not reach for the food.

He was smiling again, though. Expectant. A little bemused.

She offered the bread again, pulling back her arm when it almost crossed the line of tiny mushrooms at her feet.

Sinara licked her lips, pushing down the urge to run away again. He still made no move to take her sandwich.

She scowled at him and tore a strip of cloth from her skirt, enough to keep the food away from dirt as she place it on the ground, just touching the border between their realms.

Then she hurriedly backed away to her tree again and pretended there was nothing out of the ordinary about any of this.

“Have some,”she insisted. It wouldn’t do to waste food.

He looked at her as if she had gone quite mad, crouching down ever so slowly and picking up her offering. He didn’t raise it to his lips, quirked into a decidedly amused smile now.“May I have your name, too?”

“Just the sandwich.” His smile made her brave, somehow, even though she knew it ought to make her afraid.“One favour a day is enough.”

He laughed, and it was the jingle of bells and the patter of rain and the wind in the trees.

It was beautiful. She was awestruck. She was worried by how much she wanted to go closer, to see the mirth in his eyes. She barely noticed that his fingers were too long, perfect to curl around unsuspecting necks, as he lifted a hand to hide his giggles.

They ate in silence and she left with the moon high in the sky.

She got a scolding for her dress, of course, and kept how it had been ruined to herself.

The next morning, it was perfectly mended.

She ran her fingers across the fabric, softer than she remembered it, and felt more than she heard the sound of tiny bells.

* * *

Sinara thought that perhaps her aunt wasn’t so wrong after all, as she trekked back to the fairy circle at least once a week.

She was inviting dark magic to follow her home, just asking for some trick and twist to be woven into every word she spoke, no matter how carefully she weighed each one.

But she had no one to play with and no one to talk to, and the fae was only too happy to let her have both.

They couldn’t play catch or tag, not with him firmly in his circle, not with her far too scared to ask him to leave it.

But he told her fantastical stories that might be true in his realm and taught tricks to field mice with a snap of his fingers and showed her a gameboard with glittering pieces and all the ways she could move them. He placed it atop the line of mushrooms, half on his side of the circle and half on hers; the mushrooms weren’t squashed when he lifted the board back up, not even a little.

Sinara brought food to share - though she never accepted his - and books she’d borrowed from the unknowing priest and taught him checkers and dice. Any piece that rolled into his world she refused to take back.

Any question for her name still send her running for her home. Yet she was perfectly happy to call him her friend, even if just in the privacy, the safety of her own mind.

She didn’t bring up how their milk never spoiled and the foxes only got the neighbours’ chickens. He didn’t ask if she had noticed that her shoes lasted longer without mending, these days, or how the scrapes on her knees healed overnight.

She braided a flower crown and he watched her work in fascination. She didn’t think he made things, not when they made themselves if he so willed it.

“Do you want it?”she asked when she was finished.

It was a pitiful offering for a magical being, surely. He nodded eagerly.

She stood and approached; he furrowed his brow.“What do you want for it?”

“Nothing.” She shrugged and stepped closer.“Or maybe you could give me your name?”

His laugh was the crackle of a fire in winter, a kitten’s first mew, the familiar jangle of bells.

Sinara smiled. She’d never asked, not even in jest, though of course she had wondered.

“Not this time,”he told her.“Mayhaps in exchange for yours.”

He bowed his head so she could set the flowers on it. She froze when she realised she’d have to reach above the line of mushrooms, the safety of the divide likely an illusion but still a welcome one.

She bit her lip and did it quickly, a tingle on her skin as she reached into the magic.

He caught her wrist as she pulled back, so briefly she almost had no time to panic, and she stumbled back as soon as he released her.

He brushed his fingers against his new crown, the flowers regaining the vitality picking had robbed them off.“Do you like it?”

She nodded before she realised he did not mean his appearance, flushing brightly as she inspected the bangle on her wrist. It was delicate, weighed nothing at all, and shone even in the fading evening sun.

She managed to hide it for weeks before her aunt saw and called her a thief.

“It was a gift,”Sinara told her, jerking her arm away from her hold swiftly, the soft sound of bells coming from the armband that had none.“And don’t try to sell it, or he’ll be displeased with you.”

She didn’t know how she knew but she did. Those curses her aunt was afeared of would find her.

“He?”her aunt asked. Her voice wavered. She’d heard the phantom bells too, then.

Sinara didn’t give her an explanation.

* * *

The rumours were abundant, what with her disappearing into the woods at all hours of the day and night.

They still stayed rumours for a very long time, until a particularly brave - or particularly stupid - band of children dared one another to sneak after the jinx.

She was busy finding abandoned nests in the trees surrounding the fairy ring for the fae to hold the eggs in his hands and blow his breath onto them until they hatched, bigger than they ought to be and ready to take flight.

The crunch of a branch underfoot gave them away; the sudden rush of cold air knocked the wind out of Sinara, the pitch-black eyes and bared fangs of her friend almost sent her running after the screaming brats.

Instead she watched them disappear between the trees. When she turned back to the fae, he looked as amiable as ever.

“My apologies,”he said.“I do not appreciate intruders.”

“They’ll tell the whole village,”she sighed.

He raised an eyebrow.“If they make it back.”

The offer was unmistakable.

“They’ll tell the whole village,”she repeated.

He nodded.“I suppose they will.”

She went from being a jinx to being a witch, and she thought she preferred that, because the muttering was much quieter and the people much nicer to her face.

* * *

“I would really like your name,”he said, as he had many times before. There was something more wistful to it this time, she thought.

She cocked her head to the side.“Give me yours and I might consider it.”

He smiled. It was a little bit sad, like he’d hoped for a different answer.

She looked out at the snow so she didn’t have to look at him. His unnervingly blue eyes might convince her of stupid things otherwise.

The snowfall didn’t make it through the barren branches only because of his magic. She’d become so accustomed to it shielding her through the years she didn’t even question if he wanted something for it. The scarf she’d knitted - though she knew he had no need of one - was likely what had bought her warmth and dry clothes for the duration of her visit.

“I wish to call you something,”he pushed. He usually just dropped it.

Sinara scowled.“Why? I won’t hardly be confused if you’re talking to me or someone else.”

“Always so practical.” He sighed, inspecting his fingernails with a casualty that could only be feigned.“I suppose I shall just have to find something else to call you, my darling.”

Her heart stopped for a moment, breath caught in her throat. Her cheeks were burning as she muttered,“If you must.”

In league with the fae, the village mumbled, in bed with the fae.

She desperately hoped he couldn’t read minds, not with the turn her thoughts were suddenly taking.

She excused herself not long after.

* * *

She returned the next day, never able to stay away long and far past the times when she had wished to convince both him and herself otherwise.

“Hello, darling,”he said, voice silk and honey.

She knew the feel of silk from the dress that had lain on her bed when she’d awoken on her last birthday.

“Hello,”she said, and wondered if she ought to call him some endearment, too. She licked her lips and hugged herself against the cold, though she didn’t feel it anyway, not with him so close.

He smiled as if he knew. He held out his hand, offering her a perfect bunch of grapes, like he had that day so long ago.

“You can’t have my name for them,”she said.

He raised an eyebrow.“I did not ask for your name.”

The grapes looked delicious. She could practically taste their juice already. The last fresh fruit she’d had was so long ago she couldn’t remember what it had been; the winter stretched on and on.

“What do you want for them?”she asked.

“Nothing,”he claimed.

Sinara scoffed at that. Fae always wanted something, even if the proportions of their favours never seemed quite right to human minds.

She moved closer anyway. She trusted him by now. Perhaps stupidly so. A handful of years could be just a game for him, a distraction. She’d never asked if his kind could die or how old they could grow.

“Have some,”he said.

She took the grapes and whatever he was about to say died against her lips. She was halfway in the fairy circle and she didn’t even care. His lips were too soft to think of anything else but how readily they parted for her.

When she stepped back, he looked as dazed as she felt.

She plucked a grape from the bunch and popped it in her mouth, just for something to do. It taste wonderful, though not nearly as good as he had.

“I feel I cheated you,”he said, fingers tracing his lips as he stared at her.“That was much sweeter than the grapes.”

She laughed, and he had a look in his eyes as if it instead was bird song, the lapping of waves against a shore, the soft sound of bells.

* * *

All was well for some time, though they never quite crossed the circle, part in and part out even as the kisses became as much part of their meetings as the shared meals.

The winter finally left the lands. The tree in her aunt’s garden was the first one to bloom.

People glared and grumbled at that but couldn’t quite begrudge the poor widow such luck.

She’d put up with the little witch for so long, they told one another, it was about time she was rewarded for such patience.

Sinara kept to herself how she had given back as much as she had gotten, if not more, from the day her uncle had died. No one had ever cared to hear such things, or any reason at all.

They didn’t care for reason either, when her cousin’s daughter would not play with the other children and would not even look at them.

Sinara was surprised when she was invited for a very quiet, very awkward meal. Her cousin’s daughter would not greet her with words but stroked the bangle on her arm reverentially throughout the evening. Sinara stroked her hair in turn and the girl did not shy away the way her aunt claimed she always did.

“Can you swap them back?”her cousin asked, hurriedly, as if the words might burn, as if they were a curse.

It took Sinara a moment to understand. She stammered even as she realised why she’d been extended a courtesy she’d never gotten before and been invited to dinner. She glared and found her words.“I didn’t put a changeling in your house.”

“Of course not,”her cousin hurried to assure her.“I just thought - mayhaps you could ask them for her back?”

“She’s right here,”Sinara snapped, and took the bangle off the first time in years to give it to the little girl. Her fae wouldn’t mind that, she was sure.

She left without another word.

She did not think the fae had stolen the child, and if so, certainly not hers. She didn’t bring it up to him for some time, scared he’d take it as an accusation. When she asked him, after all, he only told her,“Some children are just different.”

She nodded and didn’t ask him to fix her, not because she was afraid of the cost but because there was nothing to fix.

She’d been the different child for years. It was not the children’s task to change themselves.

“I hope they learn to love her,”she said.

It wasn’t a request but the next time she saw her cousin on market day, all she heard was gushing about the little girl’s wonderful weaving.

Sinara bought a tapestry she could barely afford, not even with the price they gave to family, and gave it to her fae.

* * *

All was well for some time.

Then the spring sickness came and took so many they had to expand the village’s graveyard to bury them all. Then the wolves tore most their cattle, and the harvest was so meagre they didn’t know how they might survive through winter.

The subtle mutter she had gotten so used to through the years became louder, became accusing; they only drove her into the woods more often.

“I can only do so much,”her fae told her, slightly too warm fingertips drawing patterns up her arm.

“I didn’t ask for anything,”she said. She never asked for anything and never expected anything, either.

“I know.” He lifted her hand to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.“You could just come join me, my love. You’d like my realm, I think.”

She was inclined to agree with that assessment, if everything in that world was as wonderful as him. But she wasn’t of his kind, and surely one day he would tire of her. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. She shook her head slowly.“I like this realm just fine.”

He cocked an eyebrow.“Do you?”

Sinara shrugged and kissed his cheek.“I ought to go now. Preparations for the harvest feast.”

Not that there was much of a harvest to celebrate.

But the priest said it would not do to offend the gods further, as they clearly already had done somehow. Half the village had glanced her way at that.

* * *

Sinara braided back her hair, trying not to think of the way her aunt had insisted she come to the feast; she had been planning to go anyway but her aunt usually never cared about her presence, or was glad for the lack of it.

She absently reached for the bangle she was no longer wearing. She’d rather head back into the woods right away. She was going to sneak off as soon as she could. But her aunt was waiting at the door, so she followed her to the town square.

The offerings to the gods were meagre, as she had known they would be, and she put down her own basket carefully. The apples were crisper than the others. She felt eyes boring into the back of her neck.

She did not see the ram that would be slaughtered at midnight. Perhaps it was still with the priest, some last attempts to make it look worthy of the gods being made.

They did not sacrifice people, she reminded herself, not like the villages deeper into the mountains, not like the clans across the narrow sea her father had drowned in.

At least they had not done so in a few generations. The altar was still the same as back in those days.

Every time Sinara tried to make herself scarce and slip away to her fae, someone would pull her into conversation, offer a drink, ask for a dance.

Not once in all her years in the village had she gotten so much attention. Midnight creeped nearer and her heart beat a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

The covert whispers turned to gasps at the thunder of hoofbeats. Sinara wondered if she was the only one to hear the soft sound of bells.

The stallion was deep black, fiery eyes too clever for an animal.

Her fae elegantly dismounted, a pat to the horse’s flank calming it. He did not tether it.

“My darling,”he said, quietly enough that only she could hear, and then loud enough for the rest of them,“May I have this dance?”

The fiddler reacted first and his friends joined into the melody.

Sinara took his proffered hand, let him pull her close and spin her across the square.

“No ram,”he remarked with a glance to the altar.

She hummed vaguely.“So it seems.”

“You should leave.” He spun her into a twirl and brought her back in even closer.“If my realm is not to your liking, I’ll find us some place else to call home.”

She stared at him, not quite comprehending.

“Or find you some place,”he said, clearly misreading her silence.“I just want to know you safe, my love.”

She still found no words. He meant what he said, she could feel the sincerity. But a being like him… how long would he mean them? When would the novelty wear off?

“Whatever you decide,”he said. 

He leaned in until his lips brushed against her ear.

“Kasius,”he whispered.“My name is Kasius.”

She turned his face towards hers, cupping his face in her hands as she looked into his eyes. There was nothing in them but love.

“Take me home, Kasius,”she breathed, and that night, in his realm, she offered him her name.


End file.
